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November 29, 2013

[Before becoming an agent, Sheikh Zaman was an airport security guard in New York, a job that did not have the stature of his occupation back home in Bangladesh, where he oversaw murder, rape and robbery investigations for the national police force. He assumed that his chances of securing a job with the New York Police Department were next to nil, but he could not help wondering why he saw so many of his countrymen wearing police uniforms, writing summonses.]

Traffic enforcement agents, all immigrants from
Bangladesh, on West 34th Street

in Manhattan. Hundreds of Bangladeshis have
become traffic agents in the

last decade, union officials said.

Above a Korean fried
chicken restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, Showkat Khan worked the room of
mostly Bangladeshi men, speaking Bengali with a few English phrases mixed in,
his enthusiastic message of opportunity broadcast through a crackling amp. At one
point, he held aloft a copy of New York City’s Civil Service newspaper, The
Chief.

“You are here to make
money in this country, and to get a better life,” Mr. Khan said.

There was more than one
way toward that American dream, he acknowledged, outlining a few options. But
one path seemed to stand above the others, if only because Mr. Khan had already
paved the way: He is a traffic enforcement agent.

Mr. Khan is part of an
influx of Bangladeshi immigrants who earn a living by writing parking summonses
for the city, a curious and growing presence navigating the choking traffic and
bumper-to-bumper sea of parked cars.

Bangladeshi immigrants,
who represent less than 1 percent of the city’s population, now make up between
10 percent and 15 percent of the 3,000 traffic agents, Robert Cassar, the
president of the union representing the agents, said.

The Friday after
Thanksgiving, which many New Yorkers mistakenly believe offers a holiday
reprieve from usual parking restrictions, is in fact one of the busiest days of
the year for traffic agents. Mohammed Chowdhury, who is from Bangladesh and
supervises traffic operations for much of Queens, said his officers might write
three times as many tickets on that day.

“The next morning,
everyone is feeling lazy; and who is going to get up and move the car?” he
said. “If there is street cleaning on Friday where you live, almost 80 percent
of the cars won’t be moved. They’ll all get ticketed.”

In the last decade,
union officials said, at least 400 Bangladeshi immigrants have become traffic
agents in New York, opening a new career path to those who traditionally find
their way in this country from behind the wheel of a taxicab. City records put
the number at slightly less than 200, but Police Department officials said they
suspected the number to be higher because many employees do not list their
birthplace.

Salaries start at
$29,000 a year, but the insurance benefits and pension are generous. A college
education and citizenship are not needed; one must be legally eligible to work
in the United States and possess a high school diploma. Residency requirements
are also slight.

Before becoming an
agent, Sheikh Zaman was an airport security guard in New York, a job that did
not have the stature of his occupation back home in Bangladesh, where he
oversaw murder, rape and robbery investigations for the national police force.
He assumed that his chances of securing a job with the New York Police
Department were next to nil, but he could not help wondering why he saw so many
of his countrymen wearing police uniforms, writing summonses.

“I saw a lot of Bengali
people walking around the city, writing tickets,” he recalled recently. He
asked how they got hired. “I was surprised,” he said. “They told me this was a
very easy job to get.”

Mr. Zaman took a Civil
Service test in 2008 and began his new career the next year.

The proliferation of
Bangladeshi traffic agents has a lot to do with word of mouth, much of it from
Mr. Khan, a 53-year-old traffic agent and union official whose informal advice
and encouragement to Bangladeshi immigrants turned into sit-down seminars, in
which he helps applicants prepare for the Civil Service exam.

“I had thought having a
uniform meant you were born in America; that was a misunderstanding,” recalled
Mr. Khan, an energetic man who made a living as an itinerant magician in his
native Bangladesh. “When I joined, I opened the door.”

At a recent seminar, one
person in attendance, Md. Shamim Al Mamun, 33, said he had been in New York for
only 16 days. Asked what he intended to pursue, Mr. Mamun said, “I’m interested
in traffic enforcement.”

The work can be
challenging. The agents sweat through the summer, shiver through the winter and
bristle year-round at the insults shouted as they slip parking tickets under
windshield wipers. The insults can be particularly unsettling to new immigrants
only in the country for a few months.

“A lot of people say,
‘Go back to your country,’ ” said Jamil Sarwar, a parking enforcement
officer for several years. “But I ignored them because I know I’m doing no
wrong. I work for the city.”

Of the hundreds of
Bangladeshi immigrants who became traffic agents over the years, about 100,
including Mr. Sarwar, went on to be police officers, Mr. Khan said.

The influx initially
caused some friction.

“Not only was there a
language barrier, which is abating, but our Bangladeshi brothers and sisters
were very standoffish at the beginning,” Mr. Cassar said. But over time, he
added, they have become less insular and more willing to assimilate and adopt
what he called “the traffic mentality.”

The tension also
extended to Mr. Khan’s seminars. He said the Police Department’s Internal
Affairs Bureau had investigated him a number of years ago and questioned him
about the sudden surge of his countrymen into the department. Police officials
would neither confirm nor deny that an inquiry had taken place.

Mr. Khan said the bureau
also wanted to know if he was making income from his job seminars; he said
that, in fact, he lost money for each one he held. “ ‘Come to my funeral’
— that is all I would ask of people,” he said.

There are more than
74,000 Bangladeshi immigrants in New York City, according to census figures. At
one point, immigrants from Bangladesh were receiving more licenses to drive
yellow cabs than any other immigrant group. (It was a somewhat strange
affinity; many had never driven in their home country.)

In New York, law
enforcement and cab driving have a complicated relationship. Taxi drivers are
frequently robbed, and the police often come to their aid. But many taxi
drivers resent receiving tickets over infractions that can easily wipe out a
day’s pay and threaten their license.

These days, the draw
toward the traffic enforcement jobs can be felt in the office of Shah Nawaz, an
insurance broker, who specializes in accident policies for livery and
yellow-cab drivers. His office, in the Bangladesh Plaza, an office building in
Jackson Heights, is as important a port of call for cabbies as the restaurants
along Lexington Avenue.

Mr. Nawaz recalled that
a cabdriver client had recently scaled back to part-time driving because of a
new job as a parking enforcement officer. Not long afterward, a 24-year-old
livery driver, who had sat down across from his desk to discuss insurance
premiums, acknowledged that he was considering a change in jobs.

“I drive a cab, but I
think traffic enforcement is a better job,” the livery driver, Abdul Hafiz,
said.

Mr. Nawaz’s bookkeeper,
Mahmuda Haseen, is married to a traffic enforcement agent.

“It is a very
prestigious job,” she chimed in, noting that her husband had sent photographs
of himself in his blue police uniform to relatives back home.

Parking enforcement
jobs, Mr. Nawaz said, had become “a source of pride for a new generation of
Bangladeshis.”

He gestured to a framed
photograph of his 14-year-old son, Sadman, and added: “He says, ‘I will be a
police officer.’ I say, ‘It’s an honorable job working for the N.Y.P.D., why
not?’ ”